Justice Committee on Oct. 28th, 2014

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

That leads in to my next question. In the event that a young person is required to eventually go to court through the process, subsection 486.2(1) of the act is amended—in clause 15—to include the possibility for a witness to ask to be able to testify outside of the courtroom or behind a screen, or whatever the case might be.

How often does this happen, in your experience, and how important is it to be able to have these...? This does break some of the conventions of the court where you're able to face your accuser, and all these kinds of things. How important is this from a victim's perspective, particularly a young person's?

[Janet Handy]

From a child victim's perspective, it's very important. Children will automatically appeal to the adult world around them and make sure that everybody is okay except themselves. That's an emotional response; that's automatic in development. They will take care of the parent; they'll even take care of the parent who may have abused them. It's important to understand what's happening with children developmentally, to begin with.

Second, there's a couple of initiatives, and one is the child-friendly court where they don't see the perpetrator. The other is remote testimony. In the event that a statement that has been recorded is not taken into court, the child may be able to testify remotely to the court.

It's unconventional, but I think it's absolutely necessary for the emotional well-being of the victim at that age. They are in no position to compete with the adult issues or challenges that are going on around them.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

That's very good to know.

One of the things you said in your testimony was that even though generally speaking overall crime statistics are going down, there seems to be an increase in certain types of crime.

Do you have any information as to why we would see that, or what kinds of increases we're seeing when it comes to exploitation, sexual violations against children?

[Janet Handy]

The biggest increase is with Internet luring. We now have a law that's challenging some of that. Internet luring, possession of child pornography, etc., are probably going up.

To me, if we enact the right laws, we're going to get more reporting, more disclosure, and that's going to make it better for us to respond. It's going to overpower the system for sure, because people are going to come forward who are experiencing it. But our experience is that if you make it a possibility for people to disclose, they will disclose.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Right.

That's my time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much for those questions and answers.

Our next questioner is from the New Democratic Party, Mr. Toone.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank you for your input, which has been extremely insightful and helpful. I was profoundly moved by the account of what victims groups experience. I applaud you.

I won't have time to ask all my questions in the five minutes I have. Even if we were to spend the rest of the day here, we would only be scratching the surface as far as discussing what really matters is concerned.

I want to start by talking about victims' access to justice. Ms. Gaudreault said that making restitution to victims was not enough. The first thing that needs to be done is prevent people from becoming victims.

There is a problem. According to the definition in the bill, a victim is someone who has been harmed as the result of a crime.

As you said, Ms. Harvard, it's not always the case that victims are going to want to bring themselves forward and declare themselves a victim, to go through that process. It might even bring greater harm to them. That's a serious question, and I think we really need to look at that in this bill. We owe it to ourselves to look at that very carefully.

To the chief of police and the deputy chief, you said that often victims' first point of reference will in fact be with police services. You mentioned that possibly more training would need to be brought forward. I wonder if you could just elaborate. Was it understanding victims' situations better, or what kind of training were you referring to when you brought that up?

[D/Chief Jill Skinner]

It would definitely be directly in relation to what this bill provides; so that they would understand that victims have a right to protection and information; so that they get the exact points of this bill—rather than a general feeling of looking after someone, understand that there are rights that victims have and that they are required to provide those services.

It's really important that as a police officer.... What we try to tell our police officers in reality is “If this were a family member of yours, how would you want them to be served?” That's really the best piece of advice I could give anybody who's trying to create a bill: that's what we're trying to provide through this bill and through our training.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

If there were more training afforded to our police services, what kind of impact would that have on the rate of people actually coming forward? Again, I think there's a consensus here that for victims to get justice, there has to be a better access, so that they know those rights are there. You mentioned that we need to explain better to victims what services and what tools they have at their disposal.

But how can we do that proactively, so that people know from the get-go that, when they come to police services, they can feel comfortable that their rights are going to be addressed and that they're not exposing themselves to greater danger?

[D/Chief Jill Skinner]

Well, the police base themselves on public trust, and if we deal with one victim in a very positive way, that information will get out. It's like a snowball and it will continue to be communicated throughout our community.

I speak for my own police service. There are police services that take very strong consideration of victims, and my police service is one of those. We go out of our way not only to provide them with the information but to do the follow-up to find out what kind of service they actually received, asking those questions as to whether or not there was something that could be changed.

None of us is perfect, and we know that everyone's going to have a bad day occasionally, but we want to make sure that whatever service we're providing is the absolute best. If something doesn't go right, we also need to hear about that. We need to hear that a particular service wasn't up to the standard that we require, so that we can make amends, whether it's with that one member or with our procedures.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you.

Did you have something to add to that?

[Teresa Edwards]

I wanted to say that for us, at NWAC, we get calls weekly, as recently as within the last two weeks, from aboriginal women who are victims of violence who have called 911 and been told.... In particular, a woman was attacked in her neighbourhood, remembered that the inside door was unlocked, made her way inside after fighting her attacker off, and called 911 when she got in. She was told that she was safe in her apartment now, that she probably got the better of him, and that if she continued calling—she had called twice previously in prior weeks about women who were being beaten in their apartments by their boyfriends, because she lives in a low-income, rougher neighbourhood—she would be charged with obstructing justice and complaining, and the misuse of 911 calls. And she had been physically assaulted and struck on the head five times.

It's really difficult for me to hear everything on paper of what it's like and how great the relationships are for victims, but for aboriginal victims this is simply not the case. I totally would never want to compare victims, but in the same summer that Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy went missing, five aboriginal women were brutally murdered by a serial killer, and Canadians had no outrage or knowledge of it whatsoever.

So it's a completely different story when we're talking about aboriginal victims of violence. We have a long way to go, and I really hope this legislation is not just another piece of paper that the government can point to and say it's doing something about victimization. We really need to translate that into action. We're always talking about taking action. I do want to see action. I want to see results, and I want to see measured, concrete steps of how it's actually going to impact the lives of aboriginal women victims, so that we don't have to keep coming here. I'm getting to know you guys far too well.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Ms. Nagy had her hand up, and Mr. Landry has his hand up.

Be very brief, if you can.

[Timea E. Nagy]

Yes.

I'm not dismissing anything she said; I'm just speaking with regard to my province and my victims and the work.

How can that information be relayed to victims? It's just in the way we're working with victims right now. The deputy chief said training. Some investigators within human trafficking know that they can put on a screen, if the victim doesn't want to see the trafficker in court, but they have to put a lot of paperwork forward, and some investigators have no idea that they even have the option.

I can go through the whole bill and give you examples of how this bill is very helpful, if we actually implement the new amendments. It's just really going back to training and education.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you.

Mr. Landry, we'll go to you very briefly, sir.

[Lucien Landry]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to comment on the current situation in our province.

In the 1990s, Quebec provincial police conducted an extensive investigation into the complaints of the orphans, collecting 22,000 pages of evidence. And only 142 out of 2,000 complaints were accepted. Situations like that make you wonder whether any independence exists, and if so, how independent are police from those with political power. We fell victim to such a situation, Mr. Chair. Police flatly rejected orphans' complaints of physical and sexual abuse. The orphans were even asked to move forward and waive their right to appeal.

The only thing I care about in this bill is assurance that police will have independence in doing their jobs and that those in political office will not be able to interfere in the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Merci, monsieur.

Thank you, Mr. Toone, for those questions. And thank you for those answers from everyone.

Our final questioner for the day is Mr. Wilks. You have about five minutes.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to continue with the questions that Mr. Dechert put before, to Ms. Harvard and/or Ms. Edwards—whoever wants to answer.

This question has to do with the victim impact statements and the community impact statement forms that are brought forward in this bill. I don't know whether you have seen these or not. It has to do with the amendment in proposed subsection 722(4) that goes along and allows for expression of cultural issues and cultural methods of expression, such as poems and drawings, which are more accessible by some than by others who have oral traditions.

Will these terms assist aboriginal victims to better articulate cultural-specific expression of how the crime affected them and their broader community? Could you provide me with what that might look like from the perspective of first nations?

This is for whoever wants to answer.

[Teresa Edwards]

It may; as you see currently, you have the work of Christi Belcourt, of Jackie Traverse, and of many aboriginal women who have used art to bring forward the issue of missing and murdered as a measure of expressing themselves. But this is only a tiny area that will advance their ability to feel comfortable in this vast system, in which aboriginal women are continuously re-victimized and made to feel as though they're the criminals themselves. They're told that they put themselves into high-risk lifestyles, but as Dr. Harvard said, they are facing high-risk lifestyles just by being born aboriginal and by being born women.

So although that language might be open to some kind of cultural expression to advance their views, I don't see that it's enough to really have aboriginal victims be heard.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

There's one further thing that I want to touch on, if I may. In my years as a police officer, I was stationed for two years at New Aiyansh, which is three hours north of Prince Rupert. One thing that became effective especially was healing circles.

Could you dwell upon that? Is there a place for healing circles in this bill? They are extremely effective, or I think they are extremely effective, especially through the aboriginal community.

[Dr. Dawn Harvard]

I think one of the most important things with the healing circle is that it takes away that adversarial approach, which is not culturally appropriate in our communities. It's also putting the conversation in a different context. One of the biggest challenges with any of these rights is that because of the long history of abuse of indigenous peoples by government, by police enforcement—I'm not pointing fingers now, it's just to explain the context—a lot of aboriginal children and aboriginal women won't go to the police.

I've had that situation myself. A friend was suicidal on the phone with me and then hung up. She was gone and I had no idea what to do. My first instinct was to call 911, but I stopped and thought about whether I would be putting her at risk of increased harm. I knew she was intoxicated, so was having the police storming her door going to make things worse, and then I would be reading about a shooting the next day because of that history?

If we have a clear knowledge of that history, that sometimes, even though the police are the first point of contact, they may not necessarily be the best point of contact for victim services, it's a good first point to turn them to...you know, talking about a safe space. If there is a history of abuse and fear of police forces, then they're not going to be accessed if you have to go to the police station or to the court systems to get that. But somewhere—such as going to your services—where you feel safe, where you feel that it's culturally appropriate, that's going to make the difference. That's where you're going to have people who give you the knowledge. You can't have access to rights if you don't know you even have rights, whether that's education rights....

I mean, we're all familiar with that, as parents. We don't ask for things for our children because we don't know we have the right to ask. So often, if we don't have that right in these situations, if we don't have somebody like a navigator to tell us that we have rights to this, this, and this, then we're not going to demand it. We've seen where people are overworked, the system is overstretched—we get that—but we need to make sure that people understand their rights. That's where something like the Native Women's Association has produced common, plain language documents that say, not in big subsection....

I have a Ph.D., and I'll be honest, I don't understand half of this; we need to put it into something that the average woman understands. The average person in Canada has a grade 5 literacy level. So we need to look at something that's understandable so that people know what their rights are, so that they can actually exercise them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much to the panellists for all those answers today, and thank you to the members for the questions.

We'll be meeting again on Thursday on this particular topic, and at that time I'll be providing the committee with an update on where we are with witnesses and what we've done with the witnesses because of the meeting that was cancelled last week.

With that, thank you very much. We'll adjourn until Thursday.